[solvegas]

 

[solvegas]

 

[Shadowmuse Blown]

I wouldn’t worry about it for a while. The Andromeda galaxy is on its way to collide with us and I’m sure the collision of dust and gas will create a bunch of new stars.

[Shadowmuse Blown]

Skylab 1 & 2 prepare to launch, May 1973

[solvegas]

Skylab 1 & 2 prepare to launch, May 1973

I remember this. They had canceled the Apollo program and so NASA had several spare Saturn V rockets and Saturn I rockets, so they used the Saturn V to launch the actual Skylab and the Saturn I to launch the astronauts. Saturn V is the big rocket and if you look closely, it doesn't have the crew capsule and Saturn I is the smaller one, but it has a spare Apollo crew capsule. Hard to believe it was almost 50 years ago. 

[solvegas]

 

[TheZookie007]

Let's do the math.

Distance from Earth to the Sun, in miles:
93,000,000

Distance from Earth to the Sun, in feet:
496,950,000,000

Time to get from Earth to the Sun at 1500 ft/sec, in seconds:
331,300,000

Number of seconds in a year:
31,536,000

So time to get from Earth to the Sun at 1500 ft/sec, in years:
331,300,000 / 31,536,000 = 10.505 years

[TheZookie007]

Gizmodo, 16 August 2022: "You Have to Zoom in for a Full Minute to See the Galaxy in This Webb Telescope Video"
The video, made from Webb Space Telescope observations, will make you feel really small.

"Space is big and scary, and a new video created from Webb Space Telescope data goes to show the massive distances separating us from the objects we’re trying to observe. In this case, it’s the Cartwheel Galaxy, one of Webb’s recent targets.

Webb has amazed us since the first full-color images from the observatory arrived in July. Early this month, NASA and its international partners released an incredible image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, a chaotic structure some 500 million light-years away from Earth, formed by the collision of two smaller galaxies.

The Cartwheel Galaxy is a stunning testament to Webb’s impressive optics. But a new video released by the European Space Agency show just how massively far away this thing is. The cinematic zoom-in shown here will make you feel really, absurdly, impossibly tiny.

'Webb’s observations capture Cartwheel in a very transitory stage. The form that the Cartwheel Galaxy will eventually take, given these two competing forces, is still a mystery. However, this snapshot provides perspective on what happened to the galaxy in the past and what it will do in the future,' said ESA in a press release.

The Cartwheel Galaxy formed when two galaxies collided, 'like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it,' as NASA describes it. The inner core consists of hot dust, and the brightest parts of the ring are home to gigantic clusters of young stars. The outer ring has been expanding for the last 440 million years, triggering star formation along the way as the outer ring slams into the gas surrounding it.

Webb is just getting started and could be operating for the next 20 years. It’ll show us the infrared universe like we’ve never seen it before."

Zoom Into the Cartwheel Galaxy

[solvegas]

Being near something like that would be catastrophic. 

[TheZookie007]

And that's the reason why it's used as the spacejunk graveyard too.

CNN, 6 February 2022: "This is the space graveyard where the International Space Station will be buried"

[solvegas]

 

[Shadowmuse Blown]

Another artist’s representation of Kepler186f and its system, here compared to our inner solar system.  Nitrogen and carbon dioxide have apparently been detected.  Oceans and clouds are just a hopeful fancy. This all still looks very promising until you realize just how much radiation red dwarfs spew out making life nearly impossible around one.

[TheZookie007]

Not to mention that it's almost 500 light-years away from us.

That first meme that sol posted is more than a little clickbaity...

I'm all in favor of space exploration and whatnot but I strongly believe that instead of looking for the next place to royally screw up, we should focus a lot more attention on making sure that the one and only known place where human life can thrive isn't messed up any more than we've already done.

Here's what NASA had to say about Kepler-186f, on 17 April, 2014:

"NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star"

and about Kepler-452b, on 23 July 2015:

"NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth"

[Shadowmuse Blown]

James Web Telescope composite false color image. 

Looky!  Jupiter’s rings!  Pretty cool.  The moons in this image are Adrastea, at the very left of the rings (very faint), and Amalthea, to the left of Adrastea.  A refraction of Jove’s southern aurora can be seen at the South Pole, kinda looking like another ring.

[TheZookie007]

James Web Telescope composite false color image. 

Looky!  Jupiter’s rings!  Pretty cool.  The moons in this image are Adrastea, at the very left of the rings (very faint), and Amalthea, to the left of Adrastea.  A refraction of Jove’s southern aurora can be seen at the South Pole, kinda looking like another ring.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to surprise and astonish! Gorgeous!!